{"id":26958,"date":"2017-10-17T19:25:22","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T00:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26958"},"modified":"2017-10-17T19:26:31","modified_gmt":"2017-10-18T00:26:31","slug":"busting-upward-the-military-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=26958","title":{"rendered":"Busting Upward the Military Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Busting Upward the Military Budget<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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The Trump administration and Congress are in accord on one thing: the budget constraints on military spending must be busted to sustain overseas bases and to fund local pork projects, writes Ivan Eland.<\/p>\n

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Although the Senate and House of Representatives have both passed the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2018 at the gargantuan sum of $700 billion, most of the largesse has little to do with defending the United States and much to do with policing the informal American overseas empire. Thus, at least some trimming to the huge amount is possible.<\/p>\n

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President Dwight Eisenhower delivering his farewell address on Jan. 17, 1961, in which he warned about the growing influence of the Military-Industrial Complex.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Of the $700 billion, about $640 billion is the Pentagon\u2019s base budget and another $60 billion dollars is allocated to fight simultaneous wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. This whopping amount exceeds last year\u2019s $619 billion, thus flouting the \u201csequestration\u201d spending caps in the 2011 Budget Control Act. Trump and the Republicans want to use budget savings from domestic spending to finance the defense spending increases. However, they will need Democratic votes to break the sequestration caps; the Democrats\u2019 price for doing so is a logrolling that would also require increases in domestic spending.<\/p>\n

Yet the Budget Control Act has helped control federal spending, budget deficits, and debt accumulation and should be retained. Apparently, when conservatives tout slimming down government, they don\u2019t seem to think the Defense Department is part of the federal bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

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The idea is preposterous that a country which alone accounts for about half the world\u2019s defense budget needs more money to keep the readiness of its forces high and to rebuild a military that has been depleted by long, senseless wars in the Middle East and South Asia.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n